Some people say there are no real characters left in the Australian bush. Not so in Larrimah, a flyspeck on the map of the Northern Territory, on the Stuart Highway south of Mataranka and north of Daly Waters.
Many people drive straight through, but others stop at the Pink Panther Hotel, visit the small unmanned museum or have a Devonshire tea at the teahouse. Irish-born Paddy Moriarty left the pub with his dog Kellie at dusk on 17 December 2017, for the short ride on his quad bike to his house. Neither he nor the dog have been seen since.
In outback Australia, telling yarns about imaginative ways to die in the bush is practically a pastime. Out there, you don’t have to travel far to find the unmarked sites of any number of historical misfortunes. For example, in 1955, not far south of Larrimah, an English migrant on a bicycle perished. It took nineteen days for police and Aboriginal trackers to find his body under a tree. Police estimated he’d died three days and 15km into his journey, after becoming deranged and abandoning his bike, food, water and clothes. He is still buried out here, somewhere in this desolate countryside, under the tree whose insufficient shade he’d spent his final moments. There are hundreds of these stories.
The nefarious landscape is part of Paddy’s story, too. In the early days of their search for him, police seriously considered the wildest possibilities. They investigated the pub’s three-metre pet saltwater crocodile, Sneaky Sam. They entertained the possibility of sinkholes, or an abandoned World War II bunker. The role of animals –snakes, birds of prey, wild pigs, wild donkeys, wild buffalo – in a potential death or a body’s decomposition were factored in.
But ultimately, police believed that Paddy’s case was a bit different. Because chances are, nature wasn’t the villain here. Whatever happened to Paddy Moriarty and his dog, Kellie, was more than likely human. It turned out the residents of Larrimah had been embroiled in feuds for years. As a result of some of those feuds, not everyone liked Paddy Moriarty.
A cast of falcons, a hum of blowflies and a stench of rotting flesh in the heat. These are the usual signs of death in the outback, but to Paddy, these were signs of opportunity. One man’s roadkill is another man’s practical joke.
The dead wallaby he found by the bitumen a few days before he disappeared was one of several he’d pitched over his neighbour Fran Hodgetts’ fence. He’d leave them to rot in the sun under the windows of the outback teahouse she ran, later laughing about it to his mates over at the Pink Panther.
Fran and Paddy had been at it for years. He called her the Bush Pig and discouraged anyone who pulled up contemplating a pie from going near the place. Their long-running feud became increasingly bitter. In the months before Paddy went missing, Fran’s gardener, Owen Laurie, also found himself in heated exchanges with the old Irishman.
Police found no evidence to suggest Fran or Owen was involved in Paddy’s disappearance, but what they did discover was evidence of wider-spread trouble in the town.
Some neighbours had ignored one another for more than a decade, others occasionally yelled abuse at each other, many had been banned from the pub. Over the years there have been accusations of theft, arson, murdered pets and mail steamed open. There have been complicated arguments over the sale of homemade meat pies, and a rift in the Larrimah Progress Association back in the late 1990s proved an irreparable split. At one point the town of 20 had two rival associations.
It’s hard to explain Larrimah to someone who hasn’t been there. It’s like an old shirt that’s been left on the line too long. Everything is faded, dusty, rusting at the edges, but there’s something charming about the decay. It’s a collection of a few roads, a museum, the teahouse and a motley crew of houses, and in the middle of it all is the pub: bright pink, surrounded by pink panther sculptures and a three-storey replica of a bottle of beer. Somehow, although it’s distinctly absurd, it’s also familiar. Like the collective image of outback Australia has been made real.
Larrimah and places like it are under threat and may eventually disappear, but a book by Caroline Graham and Kylie Stevenson, "Larrimah - A missing man, an eyeless croc and an outback town of 12 11 people who mostly hate each other", may keep it alive for a little longer - or is there even a movie coming up? Wolf Creek, eat your heart out!
P.S. Also read "We are all eccentrics here", or listen to Phillip Adams.
